Many products are shipped in containers having a portion that can be removed at a point of use or sale to display the product in the container and make the product easily accessible. These containers typically have a top portion that can be partially or wholly removed or pivoted out of the way to expose the contents. Containers with removable top portions generally use tear tapes or the like to facilitate the separation of the top portion from the bottom portion. Such structure is difficult to manufacture and burdensome to use. Further, containers with limited removable sections restrict access to the products within the container. Thus, the nature and type of product that may be placed in the container is limited.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,981,632 is an example of a prior art effort to solve the problems inherent with conventional shipping and display containers as described above. In this patent a blank is folded and glued so that the container can be opened without requiring the use of tear tape or similar means. This is accomplished by gluing together flaps at the sides of the container, with a frangible line connecting a side flap on a top section of the container with a side flap on a bottom section. The frangible line can be broken by grasping and pulling the side flaps connected to the top portion, thereby releasing the top portion side flaps from the bottom portion side flaps and enabling the top portion to be pivoted up to expose the contents of the container. However, the top portion remains attached to the bottom portion along a hinge line at the top of the rear wall. To completely remove the top portion from the bottom portion this hinge line must also be broken. Moreover, the manner of folding and gluing the blank results in a triple thickness of flaps at the sides of the container, and produces interrupted surfaces on the sides of the container that make it difficult to apply graphics to those surfaces.
It would be desirable to have a shipping and display container that has a top portion removably joined to a bottom portion so that the top portion can be completely separated and removed from the bottom portion by the simple expedient of grasping and lifting a tear-out panel in one wall of the container, and wherein uninterrupted flat surfaces are provided on all sides of the container for accepting graphics.